Hello! Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve been on WordPress… I will be doing most of my blogging on my main website now. I currently have a political/creative project going for the month of May called Blog March. Please check it out and keep up with me over at RobinRenee.com!

]]>https://dreambetween.wordpress.com/2017/05/01/join-me-at-robinrenee-com/feed/0dreambetweenRobin Renee at Corvallis Pride, June 28, 2014 - Photo by Mina Carson“Blessed Be, Namaste” is a Winner of the 2016 Vincent Silliman Hymn Competitionhttps://dreambetween.wordpress.com/2016/05/08/blessed-be-namaste-is-a-winner-of-the-2016-vincent-silliman-hymn-competition/
https://dreambetween.wordpress.com/2016/05/08/blessed-be-namaste-is-a-winner-of-the-2016-vincent-silliman-hymn-competition/#commentsSun, 08 May 2016 04:35:13 +0000http://dreambetween.wordpress.com/?p=785]]>Well this is a strange and cool surprise! Several years ago I heard from Scott Roewe, Music Director at Unitarian Universalists of Santa Clarita, California. He had come across “Jai Ma” and wanted to perform it for one of their services. I was on my way for a bit of an L.A. adventure this March (more on that soon), and I thought of getting in touch with Scott. I wound up with a Sunday morning gig (after a late night of Saturday night dancing) and some good connections and collaboration. Before the trip, Scott invited me to enter a UU song contest. I procrastinated on it, but eventually sent “Shivo Ham” and “Blessed Be, Namaste.” Good thing I got around to it. I was psyched to find out yesterday that “Blessed Be, Namaste” is one of their winners. I never thought I’d write a song that might one day have the potential to be performed as a UU hymn. I’m glad some people have found a positive resonance with this tune.

Let Peace Expand
Music & Lyrics by Lisa Murray
From Temple New Hampshire

The Light Of the Spirit
Music by David Kent
Lyrics by Rev Sarah Tinker
Maidwell, United Kingdom

Seed of Hope
Music & Lyrics by John Kramer
From Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts

The Stream of Life (Come Take My Hand)
Music by Elizabeth Scribner
Lyrics adapted from Rabindranath Tagore
From Davidson, North Carolina

Together
Amber Fetner
Music by Chris Hayden
Lyrics by Myrna Adams West
From Athens, Georgia

One Small World
Music & Lyrics Lucy Holstedt
From Somerville, Massachusetts

Open Your Heart To The Joy
Music & Lyrics Cheryl Ritch
From Fredonia, New York

People of Hope
Music & Lyrics Darryl Loiacano
From Kalamazoo, Michigan

A special thank you to the Judges for their contribution.

Rev. Mary Katherine Morn | Director of Stewardship and Development and Special Advisor to the UUA President
Bailey Whiteman – Choral Director for the Washington Ethical Society, Washington D.C.
Bertram Gulhaugen – Music Director Westside Unitarian Universalist Congregation Seattle, Washington
Each winner will receive $100, and have their music read down and recorded at the upcoming UUMN conference in Madison, Wisconsin July 20th – 24th.

I’ve been telling myself this for a while now, and I’ve started to say it out loud. In terms that sound like what a visual artist might use, I have to say this is my post-kirtan period. In the past, I’ve called my music Bohemian-Glam, and more recently, Mantra-Pop. I guess in a way all those terms remain part of what I do since all that I’ve done will inform what comes next. There’s something that also appeals to me about the manufactured nature of any terms to describe music; they can point to a combination of sound and concept, at best, but you really get to make it up. Maybe I’ll declare “Post-Kirtan” a sound all its own.

This acknowledgment is showing up at a time that in my personal life I am actually coming back to yoga and chant music after a time of separation from most everything to do with it. Staying away was necessary for some shifting relationship self-preservation for a while, but I am glad to reclaim those practices that work for me now, in earnest. I am humbled to hear from so many people about how the work I’ve done with kirtan has had a positive effect. I won’t forget that. I am listening to mantra as I write this.

What I’ve known for a while, though, is that what feels like the peak time in my life to focus on chant, at least in terms of performance and recording, has passed. I have slowly been getting comfortable with this, and talked about it somewhat on the Positive Energy TV show in the summer. That doesn’t mean I won’t facilitate kirtan and other contemplative practices in public spaces at times. In fact, I just booked a concert and kirtan event for April 16th in Plainsboro. It doesn’t mean I won’t record kirtan if it arises again, or sing with the Kosmic Kirtan Posse, if asked. What it does mean is that I’m acknowledging how much I’ve missed being the full-on singer/songwriter, how necessary that path is for me, and it’s the path I set myself back on now. This is the path where the healing and power seem to occur most naturally for me.

It has been mildly traumatic finding the confidence to write again in the way I know I can, and focusing back on club gigs and beyond feels daunting. How did I lose that trail for so long? At least I have some sense of what’s worked before, what definitely didn’t, and some ideas about where I’d like to go. It’s time to ring in the new!

This Friday, I’m doing a two-set café show with Jessica Floresta on vocals and viola. It is a small gig in a very familiar place. I will be very happy to perform there, and I hope you’ll join us if you can. Each bit I do to prepare for it feels like a little triumph; a lessening of the distance between myself and where I need to be.

This summer’s treks to points west were good ones. Over the past couple years, the odd niche of concert performance, kirtan, SubGenius shenanigans, and Devo worship has been fun. It also reminds me that the width of Pennsylvania is substantial, and that a gig or two along the way to Ohio would make for reasonable stopping points. I have made such idle complaints from time to time. For the most part, I am happy to travel, often alone. I’ve taken a lot of life that way.

I still thrive with a fair amount of aloneness. Lately, there has been more time filled by getting emotionally in line with writing than actually writing, but I’ve recognized that as a necessary part of my process. I don’t love this fact, but it is what it is for now.

I am happy to say that the balance of aloneness to togetherness has changed in the direction I’d hoped. Back on 2011 I wrote about preparing a place in my heart, mind, and home for poly family. It has been a long road and for a while it was best to mostly forget about. I didn’t dwell in a state of constant longing or go on a relationship quest. That hasn’t been my way. I have, though, allowed myself to be conscious of the intention.

This summer was the first time I took the mini tour to the Cleveland area with a partner. It was an easy-going, great experience to have a friend and lover (not to mention driver, roadie, and general assistant!) along for the trip. Here’s hoping for many more travels to local and faraway places. I do like to stay in motion, but even more than that I love the prospect of an emotional and spiritual traveling companion – Someone who wants a support system to navigate the twists and turns of the mind and is up for the task of being so for me as well.

I’ve never been set on the configuration my poly family should take. I’ve been one to allow relationships to develop as they will without a lot of engineering from the outside. In this case, I find myself developing deep bonds and becoming part of a family already well in progress. I had the chance to talk about our connection this week at Poly Role Models. There are ecstasies and practicalities, even-tempered positives, and some challenges I do my best to look at clearly. I’m up for all of it.

It’s a good thing that calls for appearances have been making room for themselves in the midst of my quiet intention toward personal life and personal growth. I have a few gigs coming up – one at the Center for Relaxation and Healing in Plainsboro, NJ on November 6th and one pending for Collingswood in the same time frame. I’m also gearing up to kick off the 2016 Caldera Pagan Music Festival in LaFayette, GA this coming May. I’ll be putting together a string of East Coast gigs to make my way south and back. I may have companionship for a few of those gigs, and by circumstance, I’m likely to also take on some alone. Those logistics are still some distance away. Either way, I have a sense of mutual support in my life these days, and that makes all the travels feel grounded in the heart space. It’s been a very long time since I’ve felt quite that way.

Seen on Robin Renée mini-tour August 2015. A very homey display at a Dutch-style restaurant in Pennsylvania en route to Cleveland, OH.

Back in the early 2000’s, I wrote for several different Central Jersey newspapers. It was never a style of writing that I loved exactly, but I learned I was pretty good at finding the formula and building what was needed. One of the best things about this kind of freelance work was discovering I could request interviews with all kinds of amazing, well-known people. Within a few days I could be in the midst of a great conversation with someone I admired all my life. I would sometimes suggest writing about shows I knew of and had a personal interest in covering, but just as often I’d pick up assignments. I felt blessed – and quite a bit nervous – when I was given the opportunity to interview B. B. King.

He was coming to The New Brunswick State Theatre, The Count Basie Theater in Red Bank, and The State Theater in Easton, PA in January 2004. We had a brief phone conversation and I captured the quotes I needed to construct a few paragraphs and let readers know he was coming to town. At the show in New Brunswick, what I remember most is how little I was able to say to him in person. I am not generally starstruck, but then again, here was a legend beyond legends. What could I really say? I remember talking to a few of his band members and being impressed by how crisply they were dressed and how they referred to him solely as Mr. King. When I got through the meet-and-greet line I shook his hand and let him know I was the one who spoke to him for the show preview. He smiled and said he’d been curious to meet me. I got a quick autograph, then realized I was without words. I slipped back into the room and just observed for a little while before leaving. I’ve come to remember this show in a way similar to how I recall seeing Ravi Shankar perform in Philadelphia. In each case it was incredibly moving and mostly beyond descriptive language to hear and witness an absolute master.

Here is some of what I wrote by way of announcing the shows in 2004:

On the cover of his latest studio CD, “Reflections,” B. B. King, with eyes closed, looks absorbed in sweet concentration, like a man offering a loving prayer, or an artist fully consumed by the music we will find therein. Yet, the 78-year-old guitar pioneer thinks of himself in simpler terms. “I’m kind of what you call a country boy. I was born and raised on the plantation,” he says of his origins in Itta Bena, Mississippi.

A simple country boy, perhaps, but with a difference: He can play the guitar like nobody’s business. He sings with deep conviction that retains that hint of hurt and grit that only authentic blues can deliver. The “King of the Blues” will rule the land Tuesday at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, and at Easton PA’s State Theater on Thursday.

“Everybody has, believe it or not, a soul, and everybody feels something… I play things that I feel and enjoy doing,” he reveals during a telephone interview before a concert in Quebec City.

Revered by rock favorites like The Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton, his profound influence on the face of music across genres and decades continues. In 1948 he left farm work for Memphis, Tennessee, and he had his first hits, “Three O’Clock Blues” and “She’s Dynamite,” by 1951. His signature song, “The Thrill Is Gone” scored his first Grammy in 1970. King paired with Clapton on “Riding with the King” in 2000, and he shows no signs of slowing down.

King recalls the making of “Reflections,” his 32nd album. “I think we got some pretty good work on it. I don’t think I’ve ever made a perfect CD,” he says modestly.

I am even more astounded by his humility today than I was then. This quote is so startling:

“I always find faults in nearly everything I’ve done, but still people seem to give me compliments…and I accept that. I think the people’s judgment is much better than mine.”

I don’t believe it was false humility. I do hope he ultimately knew and truly experienced his own brilliance and the joyful sounds he brought the world.

This spring the heart will bloom forsythia
Words for love fresh as new basil
But old enough to know,
to know the truth of love,
to be placidly, startlingly sure.

When you said those words, first time, I was not ready
My face swirled dayglow chain confusion,
But I heard.
I knew it was not said
just one time in the heat
when your fingers had me lose language
and in my fiber I wished to drink from you
the pearls of new life.
It was measured and bare and I am ready now
Yes
I am

Can you see the color of desire?
Undress it with the wild eyes of reason
and know it, sure as your own tongue, certain as
clay – solid, and absolute in your hands?
When you touch me,
in the expanding times of skin and glisten,
do you spread open the veils that once kept separate
Sex from Truth
Plural love from Honor
Masculine pose from Feminine power
Body from Mind-Spirit
Can you taste, now?
Can you taste wisdom and wanting?

Let me speak it
in breathless, wordless praise
Most High
Most Physical
in the clearest way I can:

I want you.
And when I have fallen into the cave
of synthesizers and soda
and when you have cocooned in
work and worry
and when those who can’t see
Don’t see –
we will reemerge
and lips and hips and toes and
breasts to chest to heart
– reminded of language –
Our words and bodies
will say it all out loud.

I love the periodic opportunity I get at Biff Bam Pop! to wax poetic about one of my favorite obsessions. Today, they published my piece on Steely Dan. I share some of my favorite tunes and some experiences in fandom. Check it out!

A closeup of the wish tree at the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, FL. Here, I promised myself to realize my creative potential. I meant it.

The other evening I was at the South Jersey Writers meetup and I announced to my friend Glenn Walker that I like music again. The look on his face let me know it was a puzzling statement. It is not a surprising concept to me, but I was surprised to hear those words coming out of my mouth and to another person.

It was a somewhat equivocal statement. I always like music. I often require lots of silence around me, but I leave space in my world for singing when the spirit moves and listening to favorites (Today it’s Wall of Voodoo.). That said, I have felt a separation from making music for a while. I’ve written an awful lot about not writing, so I won’t bore you or myself with that. What used to feel like an uncomfortable alienation from creative source feels like synergy now.

Even though I haven’t produced many songs of late, I am very happy with “Everybody Does the Best They Can” that I performed with Jessica Floresta at the Soma Center in Highland Park. There are more where that came from, still dwelling in my head. Now is the time for me to be gentle with myself and let the songs emerge when they will. I don’t mind the gentle reminders from Glenn, other friends, and potential collaborators. I am on the mission. I am also very aware of the value of the other creative things I am doing now and I feel at peace in following the trail of the creative impulses that are calling me.

I have been very busy with SEO, Web Design, and Social Media Management. I really dig it. I used to keep my musical and creative writing life separate from any of my “other work.” My experience of this is entirely different now. I appreciate the orderly and concrete more than some may imagine, and this branch of my work has given me a sense of much needed productivity and stability. It has been an important factor in my feeling that much happier in creative space. I have been working a lot my friend Brian Loebig at Loebig Ink. We met a number of years ago when he was booking shows at the 5th Street Coffeehouse in Philadelphia and he recruited me to perform.

In other news, two weeks ago my good friend Betty invited me to be an extra in her actor/producer brother’s comedy horror movie. It was a blast being a vampire for a day! Last weekend, I was invited to play guitar for the very talented Brienna DeVlugt for two very different happenings – a Lord & Taylor fashion show and later that same day for a West Philly community event. In February I created a workshop focusing on non-binary gender identity at the Poly Living conference. Sometimes no matter what I do, I perpetually feel less busy and less productive than I’d like to be, but as I say, I try to be gentle with myself and take time to appreciate this eclectic cycle of events.

I have had a lot of activity out in the world given the internal shifts and changes and inner work that has needed attention. I recently had the fastest end of major relationship and beginning of new major relationship I’ve ever experienced in my life. This has been a lot to process. I am trusting. My head and heart have been spinning now for the better part of a year, and now I find myself happy and centered in a space of love.

This year, there will be songs and I predict projects I haven’t even yet considered. I am in the mood to simply see what’s next. Right now life has a lot to do with peaceful enjoyment, finding – and creating – day-to-day stride, and nurturing precious new connections.

I wrote a piece on one of my favorite albums for BiffBamPop.com. Here is a description of the column.

Each week, one of Biff Bam Pop’s illustrious writers will delve into one of their favorite things. Perhaps it’s a movie or album they’ve carried with them for years. Maybe it’s something new that moved them and they think might move you too. Each week, a new subject, a new voice writing on… something they love. This week, BBP contributor Robin Renee talks about Gary Wilson’s You Think You Really Know Me.